Adult Movie Industry Follows RIAA's Footsteps, Sees Lawsuits As New Revenue Source

It used to be that when you thought of BitTorrent-related lawsuits you’d think of the RIAA, or maybe the MPAA. It may be time to update that line of thinking. TorrentFreak notes that we’re now approaching 100,000 copyright infringement lawsuits filed here in the US of A in the past 12 months alone. The thing is, it turns out that pornography studios are now where the RIAA was several years ago, suing everybody under the sun in order to scare people into no longer illegally downloading their content. This should be fun for everyone.

The recent uptick in lawsuits can be traced back to The Hurt Locker, last year’s Oscar-winning film about the Iraq war. It was alright. You’ll recall that the movie’s producers had complained that nearly nobody had seen the movie, and clearly that was the result of people illegally downloading it. How else can an Oscar-winning movie have made so little money?

Perhaps because the average American doesn’t want to see movies about Iraq? Just a thought.

The adult movie industry was quick to follow The Hurt Locker’s lead. It’s no secret that the industry is hurting, and it’s also no secret that it’s dead-simple to find their content online, particularly in this age of streaming video sites. You simply Google “stuff” and you’re swimming in whatever it is you want to swim in.

That two of the biggest adult BitTorrent sites were recently shut down shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

These scare-suits typically have settlements in the $1,000 range. Again, the RIAA parellels are obvious: either you settle for X-Amount today, or we’ll make your live a living Heck; our lawyers are just sitting here, waiting to pounce.

You don’t want to get mixed up in that, so you settle and hope it all goes away.

Bottom line: if you’re still using BitTorrent to acquire content that you shouldn’t be acquiring, don’t.